Academic Year 2015-2016

Cassidy Devault – Madrid, Spain

DeVault, CVitals: Junior Spanish major and Pre-nursing

Goals: I have a love for the Spanish language, but like many other Spanish majors I’m not fluent in it, and studying abroad is a great way for me to become fluent. I hope that spending a year in another country will improve my confidence, both with the language and with my ability to travel and adapt to new situations. I am also extremely excited to travel the cities throughout Spain and other European countries.

Motivation: I have known that I wanted to travel abroad since high school, and I decided that now was the perfect time to live abroad for an extended period of time. There were quite a few options to study abroad in a Spanish speaking country, as well as for how long to go for. Eventually I decided on Spain due to its history and proximity to other European countries, knowing that I wanted to travel all over. I chose Madrid because of its rich culture and the opportunity to immerse myself in a city where I could really experience that culture. Also, the Madrid program offered me the opportunity to study in a Spanish university with Spanish speaking students.

Previous overseas travel: Jamaica

Caroline Stevens – Madrid, Spain

Stevens, C.Vitals: Creative Writing and Spanish double major, Gender & Women’s Studies minor

Goals: I want to become fluent in Spanish, meet some weird people, and see as many different places as I can in a year.

Motivation: Traveling has been my motivation to both study abroad and major in Spanish. I chose the year-long program in Madrid because it will be easy to travel to other countries, and because Spain has a rich history that I want to understand better. I’m also really looking forward to meeting people from other countries and connecting with them.

Previous overseas travel: Canada, Mexico, England, and Costa Rica.

 Tammy Tian – Tsinghua University Beijing, China

Tian, TVitals: Junior, journalism & mass communications, East Asian studies

Goals: Fine tune Chinese language skills, uncover my family’s oral history, understand China’s contemporary domestic perspective, find an internship position, and graduate.

Motivation: Pragmatic idealism has lead me to study abroad. In my case, China is the most reasonable choice for my academic interests and my pursuit in becoming a Journalist on Chinese society. But on a more idealistic note, these days, the world as we see it seems so cynical. Everyone seems so disillusioned with the possibility to dream. But this reality we live in only exists because we allow it to exist. There needs to be something different to believe in. I want to believe in this as a reflection my academic training, my family’s morality, and my personal ideology.

Previous Study Abroad Experience: Shanghai, China